Cool Infographics

View Original

The State of Infographics at SxSW 2014

I post all types of infographics and data visualizations from designers all over the world here on Cool Infographics, and as a recap, I wanted to take stock of the state of infographics and data visualization at this year’s SxSW Interactive conference in Austin, TX.

I’ve been going to SxSW for a few years now, and infographics have been a growing presence in the Interactive portion of the conference every year.  You can find hidden sessions about data visualization, visual communication and infographics in different portions of the conference like the new SXsports, Health and Business sessions.

Check the links and search the presentation hashtags on Twitter to find more information and audience comments from each event.  I know I didn’t catch everything, so send me links to anything (Events, notes, slides, etc) I missed through the Contact page or the comments and I’ll add appropriate ones into the post!

*Sessions I was able to attend

Official Events:

  • Gabriel Schaffzin, Researcher & Designer & Builder, Skeptic @gabischaffzin

  • When Edward Tufte tweets mockingly of the leaked NSA slides, he does so as the self-anointed king of presenting evidence. Empiricism’s head cheerleader, he has built an empire on telling everyone—lowly marketer to NASA bigwig—what Truth looks like.  And we eat it up. 

  • Presentation slides: http://utopia-dystopia.com/blog/2014/3/8/sxsw-interactive-2014-austin-tx

  • Fernanda Viégas, Research Scientist, Google @viegasf

  • Graham Roberts, Graphics/Multimedia Editor, The New York Times @Grahaphics

  • Karl Gude, Graphics Editor in Residence, School of Journalism at Michigan State University @karlgude

  • Ronnie Lipton, Info Design Author, Trainer, Consult @ronnielipton

  • We are a unique gathering of professional visual communicators who employ a wide variety of storytelling platforms (print, interactive and motion graphics) and visual tools (maps, graphs, diagrams, video, etc.) to do our jobs. We will explain our process for finding visual stories in the data, discuss the best technologies for doing what we do and illustrate how we build, plan and execute graphics.

  • Wind Maps: http://hint.fm/wind/ 

  • Sketchnotes: https://twitter.com/KKellyMSU/status/443484058043944960/photo/1

  • Dan Roam, President, Digital Roam Inc @dan_roam

  • There are 3 simple rules for making an extraordinary presentation:  

    1. Tell the truth 

    2. Tell it with a story 

    3. Tell the story with pictures

  • Brian Wallace @nowsourcing is the founder of NowSourcing, Inc., a infographic design and social media agency since 2005 serving everyone from startups to the Fortune 500 and everything in between.

  • Nate Silver @NateSilver538 appeared at the SX Bookstore to sign copies of “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don’t”

  • Graphic Recordings of SxSW Interactive Events 

Unofficial Sessions:

  • The Attention Economy with Walter, book signing by Ekaterina Walter @Ekaterina, co-author of The Power of Visual Storytelling

    • “Attention is the new commodity. Visual storytelling is the new currency,” say co-authors Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Gioglio in their new book The Power of Visual Storytelling. The first 100 attendees for Ekaterina’s signing will get a copy of her book. Come chat with Ekaterina about the visualization revolution and her thoughts about SxSW Interactive 2014.

    • Hosted by Vocus@Vocus

    • http://www.eventbrite.com/e/wtf-sxsw-visualize-a-powerful-future-tickets-10822280733

    • FH Black Box lounge at the Four Seasons (#FHBlackBox)

  • Column Five announced the release of Visage

  • Cool Infographics Meetup

  • Special thanks to the team at the Fleishman Hillard Black Box Lounge!  They allowed me to host the Cool Infographics @Coolinfographic meetup event after my book signing on Monday for anyone that wanted to hang out.  It was also an opportunity to meet fans and sign books for people that didn’t have official SxSW badges.

Please help add anything I missed by posting in the comments below or sending me a note through the Contact page.  I’ll add new content into the post above.

Update on 2014-05-13 14:51 by Randy

A modified version of this post was featured on The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randy-krum/infographics-at-sxsw_b_5001070.html